some1105

I'm really happy with this year's crop of bakers. Particularly the women are a pretty lovable bunch--I don't even mind how expertly they're curated, because the casting people are great at this. I do think Ian needs to start breaking his family's rule about not making any jokes, even if they are likely to be groaners, as so far I'm missing the man "characters" of yesteryear--Richard, Howard, Louis, Norman, and I think he's a candidate, along with Paul if he loosens up a bit, and Tamal, who seems very sweet. As for the ladies: Flora as this year's Martha will work for me as long as the halo of sweetness gets spiked with more references like her parents "threatening" her not to bother coming home if she doesn't make it through; Sandy is expertly deploying the sly dousings of liquor and stream of eccentric self-description and cheeky "ohhh, my chunks are well dispersed"; Nadiya brings the positivity along with a dose of zingy honesty: "No, of course I'm not okay with twelfth!"; The looming presence of Ugne's partner standing watch over their kids in the other room during their home footage cracks me up every time I watch it; Dorret needs a few huge hugs and some perspective, as it's not going to get easier; and Marie is my first call to make the final. I was very amused to see that her picture perfect cake for her grandkids appeared to have a pinata-style center just filled with loose M&Ms. There's no way I'm not going to have fun watching this season. I need more lingering nature shots and (I can't believe I'm writing this) I actually missed the Historical Tangent with Mel/Sue. There are food historians toiling away in total obscurity across Britain, and this show has given them the opportunity to spring to brief national fame by explaining to us why Madeira cake appears to contain no Madeira and why Brits have reportedly stopped eating delicious delicious black forest cake for the past three decades...

After all the talk with Stannis, Jon walking out to take Slynt's head was such a bizarrely lovely call back to the first episode, and I just thought--this is how you be Jon Stark. Not by taking Winterfell, but by being the man that Ned raised. I haven't gotten this choked up over an episode in a bit.

Based on this episode, I think Annelise killed Lila, and has been planning to set up Sam for it all along. I think she's known every single thing that has been "revealed" to her throughout the season so far all along, and has been moving everyone around like chess pieces to have them discover the various elements that would ultimately crucify Sam and lay them at her feet. I think things go very wrong and Sam ends up dead, and that in seasons going forward, those left alive all have something on the others, and the drama will unfold from there. Otherwise, none of them has any reason to have anything to do with each other once the semester or year (the class/internship) is over. Once the Keating 5 get their grades/work experience, why keep doing Annelise's dirty work unless she has them for covering up Sam's murder? Assuming Annelise herself doesn't kill Sam, why would she keep them around unless they have explosive dirt on her? Even having suspended my disbelief for weeks that any of Annelise's students or employees would keep compromising themselves for her given her almost entire unpleasantness, there has to be something on the order of Mutually Assured Destruction going on for the situation to continue to support a multi-season show.

As much as I dislike Aaron, I do like Doug, and I think he may have been saved by the purple team's win. Without the purple win, blue would have won and both Boston and Rebecca would have been safe. With Katsuji still having immunity, I think Doug would have been on the block--even with good flavor, that presentation was shockingly atrocious.

I have a really low threshold for enjoying this show; even its weaker episodes are usually fine by me. This one, though--I thought it was an unfunny botch from start to finish. The fact that Penny needs to flirt to boost her sales is directly related to why Amy was right in her argument with Bernadette. There were multiple disturbing gender-related topics raised tonight, and none of them was handled with either intelligence or wit. I contrast that with black-ish's trenchant and hilarious episode about corporal punishment last week, which may be one of my favorite 30 minutes of tv comedy ever, and Big Bang really blew it for me tonight.

Wait just a minute there! I'm originally from Minnesota, and I know there are tons of chefs in the Twin Cities who could kick ass with lobster and crab! How dare you?!?!?! (just kidding--I'm just doing my part for the interobang) Seriously, though, we did a Cajun and Creole-themed Christmas in Minnesota two years back--offerings included (real, not mock) turtle soup, alligator fritters, fresh-made beignets, a seafood boil, jambalaya and gumbo made with real file, etc. So I absolutely agree with you about the portability, in some ways, of regional foodways--in fact, the food cultures that each of the cheftestants bring with them from around the country is one of the things I like best about the show. I'd love to see a Top Chef Minneapolis--I don't think it would be at all what people would expect--as long as they kept Zimmern the hell away from it. I was going to say that maybe we're just not seeing enough diversity among the offerings prepared by this season's cheftestants, but then I'm not sure that's true either. We've had congee, Gregory's stew from the food "festival", petroleum fondue, curry, faux-mole, tea-viche, crudo, etc. I think we just need a bit more screen time spent on the food, as someone mentioned above. I know that the actual food describing and discussing bits at Fenway seemed to fly by/bleed together this week.

Oh, Jeez. Every single one of the cities/states(in the case of Texas) that has hosted Top Chef has interesting culture generally and interesting food cultures in particular. Yup, even Vegas, which for my money (of which I've spent plenty in the restaurants) has the best fine dining scene in the country outside of NYC (and yes, I'm including San Francisco). Every season is going to have episodes with challenges that don't scream "interesting culture"--for just the New Orleans season alone, Lea Michele's Halloween party and LSU campus cookin' come to mind as particularly bland, culture-wise. They didn't make me damn the entire city/season. I'm happy to blame Top Chef the show for taking lame approaches to tie-ins to, say, the Boston Tea Party--just "cook with tea" in a relatively short period (not enough time to do a ton with an ingredient that would benefit from more time to infuse flavor, as with tea smoking) wasn't the greatest. The game play aspects of One If by Land were corny, yes. I personally find American colonial history to be drier than, say, British Tudor or 19th century Russian history. But that doesn't make Boston, a seminal location for American revolutionary and political history, somehow "culture free". Me, I'm pretty averse to crowds and gross displays of public drunkenness. That doesn't mean I think New Orleans is without cultural or culinary value just because Mardi Gras doesn't interest me.

How can I not have fun with a show whose latest villain's last name is a cross between "snot" and "shart". SNART. That's good all-American kindergarten humor there (no sarcasm, and no offense intended to Canada--I'm sure you guys have good kindergarten humor too).

Yeah, Dennis Eckersley had a real Sam-Elliott-cum-David-Cassidy vibe going on. Some of the teas were fancified versions of basic teas--there was definitely an oolong in there with some kind of wonkaberry modifier. I blame TeaVana and David's Tea.

(Decades-long) New Yorker here who will never get over the loss of Shea: I and many of my fellow New Yorkers (even, ahem, Yankees fans) can relate to many Bostonians' veneration of Fenway, to the feeling of goin' to church. I'm not saying it's just a New York/Boston thing to love baseball and certain stadiums. It's more that I want to put it out there that part of the "New York/Boston baseball rivalry" tradition is that it requires both sides to participate--the rivalry may not be always "friendly", but it's comfortable because it's tradition, and in that way we need each other, and there's siblinghood in that. I was so thrilled for the Sox in 2004, because I thought it would make the rivalry friendlier. I also have no problem with this season's tributes to first responders. God knows New Yorkers don't universally venerate cops without reservation. There are serious police conduct, corruption and brutality issues in our city, and the public discourse on those issues is active and ongoing. It is possible to take those issues seriously, and also to show respect for the very real sacrifice and bravery inherent in how they have performed during seriously traumatic events. Every city is going to have its cultural touchstones, some of which are going to make natives of that city groan (I can hear it coming about the Cheers bar), and some of which aren't going to make sense to people who don't live there. It's a fact of life in New York and Boston that our Bravest, our Finest and our baseball teams happen to be cultural totems, imperfect though they are. Thus they're going to be easy things to use as framing devices on a show like this--just like they cooked with tea (despite our pro-coffee statistics) because it makes for an easy Padma soundbite about the Boston Tea Party. ETA: I also agree that most New Yorkers and Bostonians don't sit around thinking about each other all that much (particularly outside of baseball season). I think the biggest thing we have in common is loving our cities, not hating each others'.

I'm kind of numb to most sob stories at this point, but as soon as Katie mentioned her father both loving and hating the Twinkies, I formed an insta-bond and was pulling for her so hard. I enjoyed a lot of this episode. Gregory is so likable so far, and is just killing it. A few more background cheftestants, like Melissa, had a chance to shine. Adam sucked it up and didn't try to blame the oven. A lot of them seemed really into being at Fenway. I wanted to eat almost everything. Welcome back, Hughnibrow! Even Katie's breakdown--tears almost always seem to make Padma's gears rust, revealing her robot innards, but she did a passable human impression tonight and squeezed out some encouragement for Katie! I've decided to ignore the shit-disturbers, so really the most irritating part of watching tonight was not being able to time my FF perfectly through the commercials and having to suffer through clips of Bravo's godawful other programming. ETA: Oh, screw it. I wanted to just ignore the jerks, but then I read Hugh's blog about them. It is truly magical (the descriptor "so lacquered-up with misogyny" almost made me lick my screen), and now I'm back in my comfort zone of full-fledged Aaron hatred. Hugh gives the best blog of any of the judges (other than Bourdain), yet another reason I'm always thrilled to have him around.

BkWurm, I'll go back and watch that scene again. Having referenced The Scientist and Three Ghosts in my post, I do understand why Barry might think of their respective situations vis a vis Iris and Oliver as having some similarities. The extent to which Felicity actively feeds the comparison, through words or silence, falls somewhere on the spectrum from doing Barry a kindness/keeping the focus on Barry/Felicity/Iris (which I'll accept from a characterization standpoint) vs. describing parallels with Oliver that no longer exist (which would be irritating and unnecessary). I want to think about it some more, because Felicity, unlike Barry, isn't mired in unrequited longing. That doesn't mean that Felicity and Oliver will be together, and in fact Felicity is straight up moving on at this point. Which makes her continued chemistry with Barry, even if it's still in the mutual "like" category, a different thing for her than it is for Barry. She's post-Oliver, at least for now. I would very much like to see him be post-Iris. Then see... The final scene could have played just as well with Felicity telling Barry, "I've been when you are now. It hurts, it sucks, and the worst part is, sometimes even if you get what you want, it can blow up in an instant and hurt even worse. Just make sure you seek happiness. Don't be held back by what won't work, even if it's just because it won't work right now." Now there's a message that's equally applicable to Barry and Felicity.

This gives me a giggle. The next time I go back to the family farm and one of my aunts or cousins brings out a red jello cake or a quivering green jello mold with carrots and cool whip, I am going to shake my head sorrowfully and drawl, "Now, I don't know if I hold with this here molecular gastronomy." Then they'll laugh with me, because I think they all watch Top Chef. I wasn't thrilled with Aaron or Keriann. I remember thinking that the second that Aaron opened his mouth, it didn't really matter what he said, Keriann was going to respond negatively, and that Aaron would just be harvesting the asshole seeds he'd been so assiduously planting. You don't get to be a dick when it suits your self-constructed "I'm not here to make friends" storyline and then not be prepared to compensate when people hear everything you say through a dick filter. Keriann also shot herself in the foot by getting caught up in the dick filter, rather than taking a step back and listening to what was actually going on. Neither of them strikes me as the sharpest knife in the block.

If anything, I could have been bothered by their bringing Felicity over for an episode, and then mischaracterizing the status of her whatever-it-is with Oliver in order to make the parallel with Barry and Iris work better. That might have worked immediately after Barry left Starling City last year (post The Scientist/Three Ghosts), but didn't make sense given the events of the Arrow season premiere. In no way are Barry and Iris in the same position as Oliver and Felicity, no matter what happens from this point on (unless you count three of the four of them being unhappy as a cosmic link). Also, if someone (Iris) can look straight in your eyes (Barry), and tell you how deeply happy she is that you have found someone who thinks you're just as terrific as she does, and the assumption is that she doesn't need to say out loud: "you know, except that I have no interest in you sexually, so it's good that she might"? And furthermore there's no quick shot of her looking the slightest bit wistful? First, you are so lucky to have someone who loves you like that. And second, you are never ever ever getting together. It's one thing for Barry to pine, but showing it like that reads like the show itself is telling us not to bother to root for them ever. That's way harsh, Tai. But also, I think, makes further dwelling on Barry's pining just pointless. Phew! Given the above, one might think I didn't like the episode, but I thought it was awesome! I liked one of the junior members of Team Flash getting a glimpse of Wells' less avuncular side. I liked worrying a bit about the depth of Wells' knowledge of what's going on outside of Central City. I liked the introduction of Wentworth Miller as a (recurring?) villain. Who keeps the diamond. I liked Caitlin losing at Operation. I liked Felicity wearing a dress to CCJitters that was only marginally less appropriate for quiz night than the dresses she wears to work in SC. I liked that the writers showed her and everyone else noticing this, and I wonder if that might have been a bit of cross-show writers' snark--this show generally, IMO, dresses Iris and Caitlin pretty appropriately. I liked thinking that Felicity is a smart girl, and has probably been to a trivia night before, and therefore was probably trying to do Barry a solid during a double date she knew would be hard for him. I liked that Eddie didn't know the name of the Millennium Falcon (cementing his core inferiority to our hero Barry), and that Iris didn't/couldn't help him (and again, I'll never have to ship Iris and Barry). I liked every scene JLM was in. There was a lot to like.

Right on!!!!!

I don't know. Corporal punishment didn't work on me. Not that it didn't happen, but when it happened, I identified it as a grave injustice and reacted to it as such, not as something corrective. The first time my mother hit me with a hairbrush rather than her hand, I tried to report her to CPS through my school. The last time my mother hit me was the last time because I had grown as tall as her and I looked her straight in the eye and said, "the next time you hit me, I will hit you back." I meant it, she knew it, and that was the end of that (and to be clear, I never wanted to be in a position of laying a hand on my mother, and never did). I had been first hand witness to toddlers being lashed with belts (I will go down with the good ship of lashing a two year old with a belt is never ok), and multiple other instances of domestic violence (outside my household) against family members adult and juvenile. From a very young age, I associated physical discipline with abuse of power over the helpless and afraid, and so, when it was directed at me, even in a much diluted form, that's how I took it. On what seemed like another planet, my farm cousins grew up getting "whooped" for various infractions (many having to do with outrageously unsafe underage operation of farm equipment), and we all sit around and laugh about it now. At least as they talk about it, they knew there was a code of behavior, they broke it for all manner of reasons having to do with childish recklessness and rebellion, and they took their punishments. All of us consider ourselves to have been raised to be respectful. They get less teasing in the midwest than I do in New York for still, in our 30s, addressing our elders as sir and ma'am, erring on the side of Mr. and Ms., and we all hop to in waiting on everyone else at family gatherings--including the next generation of their kids, who as far as I can tell have been raised with whoopings and still range from angels to brats in no discernible pattern. I have no answers, and I really responded to this episode because I didn't have to. As it was going on, I realized I would not be upset with the show or Dre or Bow whether or not Jack got whooped, because no matter how it turned out, I was going to understand where they were coming from, why they did it. Now that's a good half hour of comedy.

Now this bothered me last week. I interpreted the witness thing the same way that catrox does, as a frustrating dead-end for Oliver (and why it made sense that he referred to the trail running cold this week, giving him a little window to shuffle off to Corto Maltese in Diggle's checked luggage). But I rewound three times in Ep. 2 to make sure I'd actually heard him say that the League wouldn't go after one of its own. The same League that had already come after Sara once, the same League that Moira had threatened Malcolm with to make him run? I have absolutely no comics knowledge of the LoA beyond quick wikipedia checks and Batman Begins, but in this show, the first thing I sputtered when Oliver said that was, "but what if she pissed off Nyssa again and just didn't tell you? What if she farted near Ra's' soup and ran?"

Maybe he was just grateful that "looked like she could handle herself" ruled out Laurel. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Oh, hey (Jen)--it's a fair question. I guess it's just that my response is that yeah, there might be gossip or there might not be, but people in Ray's and Felicity's positions wouldn't have to care, and therefore there's no reason to give her a different office. As part of Ray's general Compensation Package of Woo and Shameless Flattery, giving Felicity Oliver's old office might even make perfect symbolic sense to Ray. Making a huge gesture that might or might not give Felicity even the slightest frisson in her happy parts seems to be right out of Ray's playbook. Or maybe he has no idea that it would be meaningful to her and it's just available. But either way, there's probably an express elevator that Ray rides to the E-suite, and neither he nor Felicity is drinking from the water cooler at this point, is all I'm saying. I maybe cared a little more about the prospect of gossip last year because Isabel was a nasty piece of work, I like Felicity, and it would have sucked if Isabel had made Felicity's daily working life a misery with innuendo. But I still didn't care that much even then because a) we all knew in our bones that Isabel was going to be evil to absolutely everybody, and b) gossips are a sub-set of trolls and thus best ignored. Yeah, but in tatters with whom? People whose opinion neither she nor Ray has to care about. They don't have colleagues. Ray has employees. Felicity doesn't have peers and co-managers. She has a standalone Whatever She Wants It To Be. In the real world, people with that level of power really don't have to care about reputation in the rank and file. There's the board of directors. That's it--unless Ray fails to turn QC around financially, in which case Felicity's employment and her reputation are the least of QC's (and its gossips') worries. Until then, if the only people (the board) who have the authority to question Ray actually question Ray, he can demonstrate quickly that Felicity has done what's been asked. Given that this board found Ray's stats and powerpoints more persuasive than the optics of having a Queen back at the helm, I doubt they care who he's screwing.

The great thing about being Felicity in that job in that office is that she literally doesn't have to give a fuck about what anybody thinks. Isabel's dead, baby. Isabel's dead. And all due respect to Felicity's former co-workers, but why would she spend time noticing their tongues wagging twenty floors down? Felicity didn't ask for the job, and furthermore, now that she has it and seemingly likes some of its responsibilities and perks, nobody can do shit to her about it except for Ray or the board of directors, and since Felicity has actually done what she's been hired to do, the board wouldn't care. So it's really just Ray. And Ray could take the job away from her tomorrow and she'd still a) be employable, and b) have more important things going on in her life. A plotline of office gossip causing any of our main characters any consternation at all would make no sense. So yeah, hey, it could happen. If it does, it will be stupid. Just like office gossip.

Julia, I won't start anything on the board unless it's absolutely necessary.

I took the following (i.e., "action", "exposure", the present tense "are") to mean success outside of the show: I won't apologize for misunderstanding, because I think that would come off as snarky, and, well, it would be snarky. I'm pretty comfortable I've been consistent about what my opinion is and what it refers to. I think I've got some sense of what you're trying to say. I don't think we agree, but that's ok. I guess I don't care enough about Mei to talk about her anymore until I've seen more. Swayze, on the other hand. SWAAAAAAYZE!!!!!!

wings--I think we're referencing different things. I wrote that an arrogant chef can shoot herself in the foot immediately after stating that a shrewd good chef can "win this thing." I am speaking specifically to success in this competition, not success outside of it. Spectacularly successful chefs can be some of the most arrogant human beings on the planet (though it's not a requirement--not all rectangles are squares, and I've known many chefs who are lovely, humble human beings). There have also been a few openly arrogant chefs who've gone all the way on Top Chef (Hung, my love, I'm looking at you), so I'm not saying it can't be done. I don't think your examples contradict my point--Stephan, Marcel and Tiffani (I assume you meant Faison, because Tiffany Derry never struck me as all that arrogant) all lost. Anyway, I feel like this is a rabbit hole. People are complicated. Many of the best leaders have supreme confidence. Confident people express that confidence inconsistently and in different ways, both pleasant and unpleasant, effectively and ineffectively. My point has only ever been that, based solely on the attitude displayed on this episode, I was concerned that Mei could be a bit up her own ass to her own detriment. Her food has looked good to excellent so far, and as a fan of good food, I'd like her to stick around and not piss me off while she does. Fingers crossed.

I don't dislike her either. I haven't liked portions of her behavior in this episode, but there hasn't been enough show yet for me to make up my mind about whether I'll like, dislike or not care about her. I do think she's likely a very good chef--a shrewd good chef can win this whole thing; an arrogant good chef can shoot herself in the foot very very easily.

RealityGal: One quibble--based on only one of the two challenges they had had, she had reason to be concerned. In the second, more recent challenge (the Todd English quickfire), both she and Broccoli were in the middle, and Katsuji was in the top two.